GReeeeN -- 11

 

Welcome to January 30th 2023! I'm happy to say that we have reached Kayo Kyoku Plus' 11th birthday today. Yup, eleven years ago today, the blog got started with Jun Horie's（堀江淳）"Memory Glass"（メモリーグラス）and since then, all of us have been through 9,391 articles (some of which are in dormant status due to no more videos for them). Supposedly, the traditional gift for people celebrating their 11th anniversary is steel with the popular gift being cutlery. I'll have to see whether I can fit in a new kayo with that theme later on today.

To commemorate the anniversary, I was looking about to find something with the theme of ELEVEN. I have to admit that it took a while but last night, I finally discovered that J-Pop's favourite group of mystery dentists turned into a successful band, GReeeeN, had the perfect song. Of course, that would be their "11", a track from their 8th original album "Ure D"（うれD）, released in April 2018. About as quirky and goofy as the founder of this blog, "11" has the band happily bouncing around within a melody of spacey technopop beeps and hip-pop bounces and exhortations as their lyrics encourage listeners to seek out new opportunities; after all, according to them, there are eleven dimensions out there. Why not take full advantage of them?

As for the unusual title, according to Natalie.mu via J-Wiki, "Ure D" refers to no longer being able to travel through happiness...or something like that. But the Japanese text goes like this: 「うれしいを通りこしてもはやうれD」If anyone can come up with a much better translation, let me know please. In any case, "Ure D" got as high as No. 3 on Oricon.

Misia feat. Hide from GReeeeN -- Ai no Katachi（アイノカタチ）

 

Continuing a bit from my comments on the 71st annual Kohaku Utagassen which was broadcast last Thursday, I've noticed that there has also been a gradual shift of customs in the format. It used to be the thing that the final participants of the Red and White teams just before the votes are tallied to decide the winning team were veteran enka singers. But with the decrease in the representation of the genre within the show over the past several years, although enka singers still can and do come on, having folks like Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）and Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）wrap things up is no longer a guarantee, and of course, Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）retired from the Red-and-White Song Festival a few years ago.

Indeed for the 71st edition, actor/singer Masaharu Fukuyama（福山雅治）actually ended up finishing for the White team at NHK Hall itself instead of his usual remote appearances during his own New Year's Eve concerts. And then finally, Misia completed the performances for the Red team.

I gather that I was probably eating breakfast or simply not paying attention in 2018 and 2019 since Misia sang "Ai no Katachi" (Shape of Love) near the end of those editions. However, I did keep my ears and eyes peeled this time around for the 2020 edition as she sang the song for the third year in a row. 

"Ai no Katachi" was actually Misia's 35th single released in August 2018 to commemorate the singer-songwriter's 20th anniversary since releasing her debut single (good heavens...it's been that long...the lady hasn't aged a day). Plus, this was in collaboration with the band GReeeeN who took care of words and music; the band also had their major contribution earlier in the show. The group's Hide assisted on backing vocals.

Should have given myself a Gibbs slap upside the head for not paying more attention in 2018 and 2019 because "Ai no Katachi" is another tenderhearted marvelous ballad by the singer. In fact, I could imagine that a number of tears were shed when she performed this one at the end of the Kohaku. What can anyone say about that golden voice of hers? 

In addition to its No. 15 ranking on Oricon, "Ai no Katachi" hit No. 1 on Oricon's digital download charts and earned Misia a Best Vocal Performance Award at the Japan Record Awards for 2018 as it went Double Platinum. It's also available on her 13th studio album from the same year "Life is going on and on". According to J-Wiki, in terms of sales, it ranks up there with another hit ballad of hers, "Everything" from 2000. And like that classic, "Ai no Katachi" was also used as a theme for a TV drama "Gibo to Musume Blues"（義母と娘のブルース...Foster Mother & Daughter Blues） on TBS.

GReeeeN performed a cover of "Ai no Katachi" which was recorded onto their 9th studio album, logically titled "Dai Ku"（第九...Number Nine） from September 2019. That album hit No. 8 on the Oricon weeklies. As much as the original sung by Misia sounds wonderfully Misia-esque, this version by GReeeeN sounds perfectly GReeeeN-esque.

Greeeen -- Hoshikage no Yell（星影のエール）

Ordinarily, Japan would be entering one of the biggest holiday periods of the year, Golden Week. However with COVID-19, that's not going to be possible. In fact, this will end up becoming the largest mass staycation in Japanese history, and I hope that this record will be achieved. So, certainly, all of my good wishes are going out to my friends and relatives over there to stay safe and healthy during this time.

The last time that I showed any interest in an NHK morning drama serial (8:00-8:15) was all the way back in 2012, the year that I started "Kayo Kyoku Plus", when I watched "Ume-chan Sensei"（梅ちゃん先生）. Right now, with the schedule being vastly changed on TV Japan, there is this huge block of time between 5 pm and 9 pm Eastern Daylight Time in which we're getting NHK in real time. So that means getting the 2-hour morning news followed by the current morning drama serial and then the information show "Asaichi".

I have watched the news and then "Asaichi" with the latter being usually presented at 1 pm on tape delay on weekdays when TV Japan used to have its regular schedule. I didn't have much interest in catching the morning serial, but frankly, I think it would have been rather churlish of me to just step away from the living room for 15 minutes between the end of the news and the beginning of "Asaichi" just to avoid the drama so I decided to grin and bear it.

Strangely enough, "Yell"（エール）hasn't been too bad at all. Basically the biography of sorts of songwriter Yuuji Koseki（古関裕而）, whose works including the Hanshin Tigers fight song have already been represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", it's been pretty entertaining because there seems to be more comedy than what I would have expected for an NHK morning serial. There is the star, Masataka Kubota（窪田正孝）as songwriter Yuuichi Koyama（小山裕一）who looks a bit like David Hyde Pierce from "Frasier" and has the fidgety timidity of Don Knotts transmitting through his face and gangly limbs. His co-star, Fumi Nikaido（二階戸ふみ）, who plays force-of-nature wannabe singer and future wife Oto Sekiuchi（関内音）, has also displayed her own share of goofiness. The narrator, Kenjiro Tsuda（津田健次郎）, only recently played a literal corporate lizard in an anime.

Of course, there is the theme song that always plays during the opening credits. This time, it's "Hoshikage no Yell" (Starlight Yell) by the band of dentists-cum-musicians GReeeeN, and I gotta say that the song is growing on me as I watch the show. It comes across as an optimistic happy-go-lucky march that foretells the musically-inclined couple's weathering of the usual obstacles (such as World War II) to happiness and success, including something to do with the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

"Hoshikage no Yell" will be released as a digital download single next month. As for the show itself, I'm not sure whether I will catch every episode, but so far, it's been a nice re-entry for me into NHK morning dramas again. I just wonder whether the current pandemic will cause any disruptions in filming future episodes.

As an update, "Hoshikage no Yell" hit No. 1 on the Oricon digital single charts.

Greeeen -- Yuki no Ne（雪の音）

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to December! It's amazing how rapidly 2018 has sped by, but here we are. November was a pretty good one when it came to this blog since we not only achieved the largest number of articles (81) for any month in the history of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", but we've also surpassed the entire count for 2017 (mind you, there were those two trips to the Caribbean and Japan last year) and it looks like we may exceed the total for 2016 (808) which is the largest number of articles for any one year since KKP started in 2012.

Anyways, that's enough of the braggadocio...

It's December 1st so let's start off with a J-Xmas tune. Mind you, going through the lyrics of "Yuki no Ne" (Sound of Snow) by the band Greeeen, there isn't anything in there that specifically refers to the jolly season, but it's got the jingling bells, the happy sing-song melody, a wintry setting, and romance, and that's good enough here.

This is the first song by Greeeen that I've heard proper, let alone put it up as their first entry onto the blog. However, I've known about this pop/rock band for years because of that spelling in their name. And it turns out that the 4 e's represent the number of band members who are HIDE, navi, 92 and SOH. Plus, they are Japan's most musical secret dentists, according to what I've read about Greeeen on Wikipedia.

I found out about Greeeen's 18th single "Yuki no Ne" from December 2012 through one of the YouTube-placed J-Xmas compilations that I've encountered. I've already played it a few times as I write this which is a darn good sign for my ears and Xmas memories. Written and composed by the band, it was also used as the commercial song for the annual JR SKISKI series by East Japan Railways. As I've said, "Yuki no Ne" is the first Greeeen song that I've listened to, but I've got the impression that it's combined their sound with a cheerful Xmas toy march.

"Yuki no Ne" peaked at No. 6 on Oricon and is also a track on Greeeen's 5th album "Ii ne!"（いいね!(´・ω・｀)☆...Great, Ain't It!）from June 2013. That album went as high as No. 3 and placed at No. 44 on the 2013 charts. As I indicated above about their media shyness, they've never revealed their true names nor their faces on TV, and apparently go to great lengths to maintain their anonymity as you can see in the above interview from 2016. I had been wondering as well about how they take care of this during concert tours; well, my curiosity was answered at 3:57 in that video. I guess dentists are a really shy bunch in Japan.

Ah, one other trivia tidbit that I gleaned from Wikipedia is that Greeeen's sound production is handled by HIDE's older brother, JIN, who is a former guitarist from the band Pay money To my Pain which already has some representation on the blog.